In our complicated world, individuals have simultaneous and often conflicting memberships in many tribes: immediate family, extended family, work-group, religion, political party, social organizations, country, race, species and life.

Everybody is aware of the problems caused by conflicting loyalties but I have not seen any good advice or guidelines on how to resolve them.

Can we create a systematic and logical hierarchy of obligations we face as human beings?

We as humans are halfway off the trees with mixed impulses: part of us want to cooperate, other parts want to fight for survival. This is natural on an evolutionary path from one stable state to another one.

We are all vulnerable in the middle.

It is painfully obvious to most of us that we could not live on our own outside of society, outside the benefits of division of labour. How many of us know how to grow our own food, make our own clothes, our own tools, build our own shelter, protect ourselves from wild animals? Some, not many.

So we owe something to each other, we owe something to our human family.

And this chain of obligation can be logically carried on to the utmost dependency: on our planet and biosphere.

Just as in Nuremberg it was not an acceptable defense that "I followed orders", the planet will not forgive us for betraying our highest level of obligation: to Life.

You're thinking too much inside the box, if my boss ever asked to do something I don't think is ethically correct, most probable thing that's illegal, I'd go to the authorities and then collect my paycheck for wrongful discharge.

Is not so much about deciding from one or other social field when in conflict, is how you about finding solutions and workarounds.
Luckily life is not so binary

(14-02-2013 09:08 AM)Zat Wrote: ...
Have you actually been in that situation?

Going to the authorities can backfire, as many whistle-blowers found out.

But, again, suppose you did have only those 2 options -- how would you resolve the conflict?

No I haven't been in that situation, but I've been in similar ones and I solved them in different ways.
You're asking me to assume that those are my only two options, and that's rarely the case for everyday life, a system that only applies to hypothetical cases are seldom useful for real ones. Trust me, I'm a lawyer

You asked for a hierarchy to try to solve conflicts between loyalties, I say that a hierarchical system is not the best solution for that kind of problems, so I don't have one.
Of course I have things that I value more than others, for instance, I put my sister above anyone else, she's my best friend and I'd give anything for her, but that doesn't mean that when I think she's doing something wrong that could affect a friend of mine or some scenario like that I wouldn't go against her in that case.

Every situation is different and require particular solutions, so a general system would be useless or filled with too many nuances and exceptions just like a legal system.